Every Terrible Thing
by FaerieChild22
Summary: Missing Scene fic set episode 9.1, written in response to a prompt set by SigmaCreations.


They were in the car on the way back from the village church in Suffolk. Their darling but completely misguided colleagues had gone off in the first car leaving the only space available for Ruth in Harry's car. Now here they were, an awkward silence stretching between them as they drove out of the graveyard.

Ruth resolutely stared out the window. She didn't know what to say, didn't know how to close the Pandora's box that Harry had just opened. Why did he have to ask at the one moment in her life when she was hurting too much to say yes, like the one moment you were too upset to smile in a photograph that would be handed down the family for all eternity.

Harry reached a hand out to cover Ruth's where it sat in her lap.

Ruth slid her hand out from under his and placed his hand back on the steering wheel.

Harry sighed.

 _"We move on from this."_

The car turned onto a wood-lined A-road and Ruth watched the greenery flash by. Why did Harry have to do this, to put her on the spot like that when her defences against him were already so weak, when she still felt so emotionally vulnerable after the loss of Ros.

Thankfully her attempts at stonewalling Harry into silence seemed to have worked. He stares out at the road ahead as he presses the clutch and shifts up a gear leaving Ruth to stew by herself, the same thoughts going round and round in circles in her own head, always coming back again and again to the same irritable issue.

"What could marriage possibly add to our relationship?!" Ruth muttered, disrupting the heavy silence of the car.

Harry's eyebrows rose with interest at this remark. He had thought the matter concluded but apparently Ruth was not as finished with the matter as he had originally surmised her to be.

"Is that a rhetorical question?" Harry asked carefully.

"Don't be facetious, Harry."

Harry sighed again, slightly more heavily. Regretting immediately her harsh to him at a rather difficult time, Ruth reached out and placed a hand on his knee. Accepting the attempt at peacemaking, Harry attempted a smile. It didn't really work but he tried and Ruth withdrew her hand, knowing from his expression that Harry was a hair's breadth from bursting into tears should she show any more sympathy. The wall was paper thin, between her rejection and the revelation about Blake, the dam was this close to bursting and she knew he would want to try and stay in control a little longer. At least until Lucas has managed to get the first car a little further out of sight.

 _"Do you ever feel like you just can't go on, Ruth."_

"Can't go on. Must go on."

"You realise I'm going to wonder now," He told her quietly.

"Wonder what?" Ruth looked across at him, abandoning her examination of the trees on the roadside.

"You said there were a thousand moments you would have said yes," Harry told her. "I'm going to spend my life wondering what they all were."

 _"...gave her life for this country and six people came to her funeral..."_

Up ahead Lucas North's car was disappearing slowly into the distance. Harry was hovering a good ten miles per hour below the speed limit and gradually losing him. No sooner had the car disappeared down the horizon than Ruth told Harry to pull over in the next field gate. He did so, obediently, and as soon as the handbrake was on Ruth pulled him to her across the gearstick and he broke down on her shoulder. Huge sobs wracking his body, his hands clutching at the cashmere blend coat covering her shoulders. She held him until he'd cried himself out, thinking of the few times Harry had let himself break down like this in front of her. Ruth knew for certain he never allowed himself this emotional freedom with anyone else.

The catharsis was plain to see on his face the moment Harry pulled back. Ruth found a packet of tissues and gently cleaned up his face. Harry leaned in to kiss her, a needy and vulnerable kiss that left Ruth slightly shaken. Instead of focusing on the slipping of Harry's stoic mask, Ruth forced herself to focus on the practical and gave him a warm hug.

"Let me drive, Harry," Ruth suggested, pulling away. She'd been a named driver on his insurance since this had started, this whatever-it-was. Relationship, she supposed. This quasi-marriage-like state. Maybe that was part of her reluctance, the odd way that they had ended up like and old married couple without any of the conventional steps to get them there.

They got out and swapped sides. Harry looked up at her for a long moment as they paused in front of the bonnet, eventually passing by with a squeeze of the hand without saying anything.

Ruth had progressed the car another ten miles down the road before Harry spoke.

"I'm sorry, Ruth, for breaking down on you."

"Its alright, Harry." Ruth tore her eyes off the potholes in the road for long enough to flash him her best attempt at a reassuring smile. "You needed that." She wasn't sure how reassuring her smile was, but he always seemed to find a calm sense of Grace looking into her eyes and Ruth knew, because he had told her once, that he hated it when she wouldn't meet his eyes because it deprived him of the one thing that made him feel calm in the midst of a crisis.

"You are my rock, Ruth. I couldn't do any of this without you."

"You did it without me for three years," Ruth joked. She saw no reason not to try and lighten the mood. They both needed it.

Harry however, seemed unaffected by her joviality. "No I didn't."

"Of course you did!"

"No, I didn't. You were with me every day."

Harry often said such things. He said them in quiet moments when they were alone, alone one the roof. Alone in bed. Alone in country churchyard. They always stumped her. Nothing in Ruth's life had prepared her to be someone's rock, to be someone's port in a storm, to be everything for one man who loved her so intensely he could hardly function without her.

Now it was Harry's turn to stare. "You said a thousand moments?"

"Give or take," Ruth shrugged. "I was speaking figuratively."

"That's one...every couple of days. Given how long we've known each other."

Ruth blushed to think of it. The number of times she had stared at Harry across the Grid and idly, in her own head, let herself fantasise about some sort of ridiculous declaration. "I suppose that would be about right," Ruth acknowledged.

"Trust me to pick the bad one," Harry mumbled.

For some reason, best known only to herself, Ruth laughed out loud at that and even Harry chortled in a slightly hysterical manner at the absurdity of the situation.

"Will you love her, comfort her, honour and protect her,  
and, forsaking all others,  
be faithful unto her for as long as you both shall live?" Harry murmured to himself and went back to staring out the window that had so beguiled Ruth before.

Blood thundered through Ruth's veins. Power lay in those words. Marriage was one thing, a desperate proposal, an abstract concept, a bit of paper, a patriarchal institution that had more problems than Ruth had time to explain them but the words, they had a magic that drove straight through a person. Damn him, the insufferable man, using the very words that he must know would pull her in.

A beat. A second beat. Harry drifted off into his own thoughts, trying not to let his disappointment get the better of him. He'd already cried once on her shoulder, Ruth didn't need him doing that a second time.

"Yes," Ruth responded.

Harry's head snapped around. He opened his mouth to speak, to ask, to clarify.

"I will," Ruth confirmed, before Harry could get the question out.

"Ruth?"

"Don't say anything," Ruth begged.

Harry shut his mouth. He observed that Ruth's hand was shaking slightly where it sat on his steering wheel. He had the feeling that this moment was so fragile that if he said anything at all, if he so much as breathed too loudly it might shattered.

They drove the rest of the way home without further conversation. There were quiet glances, tentative smiles, soft touches but no words. It might seem absurd to some that Harry had gotten to the age that he had without falling in love as hard as he had with Ruth, without falling head-over-heels in the way that made you speechless and needy and desperate. Even Ruth seemed to have gotten used to her own feelings, to be able to deal with them. Since their relationship had developed a few months after Ruth's return, Harry often found himself struggling to suppress his emotions. Harry knew he had very nearly messed up everything by being a little too forthright, by letting his feelings get the better of him in the churchyard. It unnerved Ruth to see him like that, he knew, but there was little he could do to help her deal with her hangups. He needed her too, sometimes, to be his emotional lifevest and help keep his head above water when too often at the same time Ruth needed him most as the stoic, unemotive man who was her boss.

Sometimes what they both needed most was a long hug and standing in the living room of Harry's house after getting home and putting off a disagreement about who was going to start the dinner they stood for a long time just holding each other. In the end Ruth made the dinner while Harry checked in with the Grid, took Scarlet for a quick jaunt round the park and came back to set the alarm. Dinner was consumed while listening to Radio 3, a station that neither of them particularly liked but it saved the need to make inane conversation and there was a gratifying lack of annoying adverts.

They busied themselves with the business of settling down for the evening. After dinner they had tea and loaded the dishwasher during which time Ruth announced she would need his passport, birth certificate, marriage certificate and decree of divorce. "It takes about 28 days, I think, so we can be married within the month. I'd prefer a church wedding but it might depend on availability at this notice." All the while Ruth was speaking to him she was loading the dishwasher, filling the power, wiping the worktops, cleaning the sink. Like their wedding was another administrative duty. Harry felt slightly hurt at such an important event being relegated to the same status a household 'to do' list but he knew this was Ruth's way of coping with sudden change and knowing Ruth she would probably spend the next few days being very curt and professional with him as she tried to work through her feelings on the matter.

Oddly, even at times like this Ruth was completely different once they were in their bedroom. Tonight Ruth asked Harry make love to her and then lay on her back with Harry's head pillowed on her breast.

"You meant something today," Ruth broke the quiet of the room, the lingering intimacy of their union hanging in the air. "You said there were only six people at Ros's funeral and you didn't want that for you and you certainly didn't want it for me. The way you said it, you meant something when you said that, didn't you Harry?"

"Its nothing important."

"On the contrary, Harry, I suspect its very important."

"It doesn't matter. We need to work out what to do about Blake and Nightingale."

"Ros is already dead and we know where Blake is. We've got plenty of time to work out what to do so stop trying to divert me. You were talking about you and me and more you and me. What did you mean?"

"I told you, I didn't mean anything."

"You want more than six, more in number, more in number of you-and-me..." Pieces began to fall into place in Ruth's mind. Her heart rate picked up, "You want a family."

The longer things went on between them the more Harry found himself exposing parts of himself he had never exposed to anyone. Sometimes, it wasn't entirely intentional.

"Harry?"

It was difficult for Harry, post-coitus, to think straight anyway. Post coitus with his hands roaming all his favourite parts of Ruth's body was not somewhere he found easy to hold a deep and meaningful conversation.

"The thought had occurred to me," Harry said at last.

Ruth lapsed into thought, stroking her hand through hair that once upon a time had been long golden curls. Now however Harry kept it cropped short.

"I thought I might retire," He announced, "You know, do the stay-at-home thing."

For the third time that day, Ruth's world tilted on its axis.

They married almost exactly four weeks later in the same small church where Ros's funeral had taken place. There was no one from work, at Ruth's request. Catherine was abroad and Graham didn't want to come. In the end, the Vicar had arranged for two of the local villagers to act as witnesses, a retired World War Two veteran who took a moment afterwards to regale Harry with a story or two a and the lady who kept the flowers who admired Ruth's vintage gown and arranged a tastefully simple bouquet.

For their wedding night they were staying in a local country house hotel at the other end of the county. They had checked in that morning, having arranged to have the same days off work at the Grid. The rings, such as they were, would not last on their fingers more than a few hours before each would take theirs off but Ruth had agreed to indulge Harry for short while. Wearing a ring after dark on their wedding night was hardly likely to cause any obvious tan line.

In their room each stood at the matching dressing tables. Ruth was taking out her earrings. Harry his cufflinks and tie.

"I'm writing you into my will," Harry announced. "I've drafted a letter of resignation and in two days time I'm going to Scotland to murder Nicholas Blake."

"Harry!"

"I should point out at this point that as my spouse you cannot be compelled to give testimony against me in a court of law though hopefully things will never come to that point. If I do things correctly no one will know. I intend on handing in my resignation to the Home Secretary upon my return."

There was a rectangular shaped stool with a soft fabric covering in front of the dressing table and mirror that sat on Ruth's side of the room. On the surface of the dressing table lay the small selection of creams, perfume and make-up that Ruth had brought with her for the big day. She fell as much as sat down on the stool and stared at them. "Is there anything else?"

"Yes," Harry replied bluntly.

Ruth stood up at that moment and walked towards him, He wore a morning suit and looked, Ruth thought, very smart. Harry glanced down at her in the reflection of the mirror but Ruth turned him around and looked him in the eye. "Things you only feel you can tell me now because we are married?"

Harry's voice was hoarse, afraid of her reaction to this latest twist in the ongoing saga of their domestic life. "Yes."

Ruth nodded. She appeared to pause on the matter for a thoughtful second before pushing Harry down onto the matching stool on his side of the room and kneeling down to untie his shoes. "Things you think will affect our relationship?"

Harry nodded, "Yes."

Ruth peeled off one dress shoe and then the other. "Harry," Ruth took his hand in her own, inspecting his wedding ring. It looked new and fresh, because it was, "I need you to do something for me before we consummate our marriage."

"Anything."

"I need you to tell me everything. Full disclosure, about your life."

A mixture of emotions crossed Harry's face. Fear, concern, anger, terror. "Ruth, you have to understand, there are things I haven't told anyone. I can't."

"Can't or won't?" Ruth pushed.

Harry, rather than being elated at finally having arrived at their wedding night after so many years of heartache looked torn and dejected. "You won't love me, Ruth, if you know what I've done. You'll be out that door in a heartbeat."

"You don't know that."

"I know I would be."

"Well," Ruth smiled, "Good thing I'm not you. Look, Harry, I'll make you a deal."

"That sounds ominous," Harry observed. He looked at his bride, his beautiful bride and tucked her hair between her ear. "So beautiful," Harry murmured. "I should have asked years ago."

"Probably," Ruth teased. "Now, listen carefully."

"You hold my future in your hands, Ruth, how could I do anything else?"

Ruth's eyes told him he was being obstructive so he quietened down, hoping to bring this excruciating conversation to an abrupt end. "We make a deal, Harry. I stay...and you tell me every terrible thing you ever did, and let me love you anyway. Can you do that?"

"Everything?"

Ruth considered that Harry looked more nervous now, in the face of her ultimatum, than he did before the ceremony.

"This might take a while," He told her quietly.

"That's fine by me," Ruth kissed Harry's hands, "We've got the rest of our lives."

It was well into the small hours by the time Ruth finally took her husband to bed. Instead of feeling repulse, Ruth felt a great deal of empathy in the face of the deluge of a lifetime of secrets open on her at once. Anger, yes, but sorrow too. All she wanted by the end of it was to take her new husband in her arms and protect him from the world, from the things that he'd seen and the deeds that he'd done. For good or for ill, he hadn't always made good choices but there weren't always good choices available to make and often times it was other people who had seen to that.

"Is that everything?"

Harry's silence was answer enough, eventually confirmed by a small, shaken nod. Ruth at once reassured him with a kiss that soon became heated. "Ruth," Harry asked quietly into the darkness. "Do you still love me?"

"Always," Ruth promised her husband and she began to undress him: waistcoat; tie; shirt and braces. When Sir Harry was standing in only silk boxers, a pile of formal wear crumpled on the floor, Harry began to undress his wife in turn and took her to bed. They made love, slow and sweet and satisfying and afterwards they lay in each others arms in the near-dark and drifted off to sleep.

Outside the window, had the curtains been open, the newlyweds would have witnessed the first pale light of dawn appear as a slim line above the horizon. A lightening of the sky from black to midnight-blue and the stars fading out. A new morning, a new day and, unbeknownst to either of them just yet, a new life as well.

* * *

Author's Note: This was written in response to a prompt that came from an internet meme. The prompt was to include the line, "Tell me every terrible thing you ever did, and let me love you anyway."


End file.
